McMartin: Gabriola Island residents take health care in their own hands

A new health clinic on Gabriola Island was designed by a local architect and built by islanders using local materials. Need for the clinic arose when night ferry service was cancelled in 2002.

In 2002, Gabriola Island felt the sting of austerity. It lost the use of its ferry for nighttime emergency evacuations to Nanaimo.

This fell into the category of minor inconvenience, unless you were inconveniently having a stroke or going into labour or in need of emergency surgery anytime after dark.

Then you had to get off-island any way you could. There was simply nothing there to handle dire emergencies. Gabriola had no health clinic, and the island’s sole full-time physician was having to respond to nighttime calls without being paid for them.

“It was already difficult to make a living as a doctor,” wrote Bruce Mason, a reporter for the Gabriola Sounder, in an email. “They came and went because so many people had doctors in Nanaimo for continuity and familiarity, or kept family doctors they had in Victoria or Vancouver before moving here.

“We had no facility to recruit and retain doctors, to store drugs [such as clot-busting drugs] or to diagnose and stabilize patients.”

The island’s string of doctors were literally, at times, operating out of the trunks of their cars. Sometimes, they used medicine borrowed from paramedics.

“We managed to get our hands on a Lifepak 12 defibrillator,” said Dr. Bob Henderson, a rural locum [temporary] physician who lives in Gabriola, “and we carried it around in our cars. We didn’t have any place to put it.”

To take the place of the ferry, the Nanaimo patrol vessel was hired for nighttime evacuations, but too often its other duties made it unavailable. The backup was a coast guard auxiliary’s open Zodiac.

“There were some memorable rides,” Henderson said. “When the patients were evacuated, we [the doctors] couldn’t go with them, and a five-mile crossing in a strong sea in an open boat in November could be pretty unpleasant. I remember one elderly woman who was bleeding, and we had her on an intravenous, and we basically had to get her in the Zodiac and cover her with a plastic sheet for protection.”

The jerry-rigged nature of Gabriola’s health care convinced Henderson and Mason and many of the island’s 4,000 full-time residents that it was time the island had its own health clinic.

The problem?

There was no money coming from the province to build it.

In January 2007, residents formed the Gabriola Health Care Society. By soliciting donations from ferry users, they raised $30,000 on the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, and by July 2007, volunteers had built an interim health care clinic in a vacant liquor store. A second doctor was hired.

“There was an immediate impact on the emergency room in Nanaimo,” Mason wrote. “There were estimates that as many as 90 per cent of visits to the Nanaimo Regional Hospital had been unnecessary and that we were saving more than $200,000 a year as well as lives.”

The success of the interim clinic spurred a campaign for a permanent one. In 2010, the society started a volunteer-run “Year of the Clinic” fundraising campaign out of a donated storefront.

The society raised more than $25,000 in ice cream sales alone. It made $140,000 with more than 30 fundraising events. The Gabriola Lions donated $105,000, the Gabriola Ambulance Society, $30,000. Grants of almost $60,000 came in from foundations, banks and private businesses. Private donations from residents ranged from penny jars to cheques for $50,000. In all, residents donated $857,000, while off-islanders donated $105,000. And an islander, Bob Rooks, a retired veterinarian, donated 4.1 acres of land for the new clinic.

Dozens of local businesses and skilled craftspeople lined up to donate their services in kind — an architect, a lawyer, electricians, plumbers, masons, drywallers, framers, landscapers, heavy equipment operators, roofers, surveyors, even a cleaning service for the portable toilets.

The society held a ceremonial groundbreaking in June 2011, and collected $130,000 in donations from the 400 people who attended.

The new clinic is almost done, and should open by the end of the month. It’s a handsome building that recalls a native longhouse, with accent timbers from trees logged on the island. The metal roof collects rainwater for non-potable use. The clinic has three emergency beds, an eye examination room, room for up to four physicians and all the drugs and diagnostic tools needed to stabilize patients on-island. A $100,000 grant from the Vancouver Island Health Authority helped stock it.

While that government money was appreciated, the cure to what ailed Gabriola came from elsewhere.

“The real story,” Mason said, “was the incredible work and effort the islanders did to get it done themselves.”

Almost Done!

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